1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to the field of telecommunications, and more particularly to authenticating a caller before providing the caller with access to one or more secured resources.
2. Background Art
Many people, organizations, and commercial and other establishments may identify callers, customers, and other persons for security, billing, record keeping, or other purposes. For example, a customer service representative for a mail order sales organization might identify a caller to verify the caller's authority to receive information concerning an order placed with the organization. A called party in a business, organizational, home, or other setting might elect to accept a call, disconnect a call, or route a call to another person or processing device according to the identity of the caller. A clerk for a commercial or other establishment might identify a customer at the point of sale to allow an informed decision to be made regarding whether to provide goods, services, or other benefits to the customer.
As identification and identity verification procedures become more advanced to serve various needs, these people, organizations, and establishments may identify callers, customers or other persons using a variety of techniques. A known technique for identifying a caller receives a telephone number associated with an incoming call and compares the number with previously stored information to identify the caller associated with the incoming call. These techniques may be unsatisfactory if the caller is calling from a telephone, extension, or location having a telephone number that is different than the number for which there is previously stored information. Other techniques may even compare a spoken word or phrase identifying the caller with a stored voice print to verify an identification made as a result of personal interaction with the caller or through digit or voice recognition of a personal identification number (PIN), account number, or other identifier. These and other techniques requiring personal interaction with callers to generate information for comparison with stored identification information are often relatively inefficient and costly.
A known technique for identifying a customer includes receiving a PIN or account number to identify the customer, either verbally or using a magnetic card reader, and then comparing the number with previously stored information to verify the availability to the customer of a good, service, or other benefit. Such techniques are wholly inadequate if the customer loses his card or has it stolen, cannot remember his number or identifier, or is otherwise unable to provide the requisite information. Furthermore, such techniques are burdensome to both the customer and the establishment in that the customer must remember the number or identifier, or carry with him the appropriate card, and the establishment must devote employee resources to the identity verification process.
Although possibly acceptable to verify the identity of an identified caller, customer, or other person, the above techniques do not identify an unidentified person out of a universe of known persons. These and other disadvantages make previous techniques for identifying persons inadequate for many applications.